Tuesday, October 27, 2009

updates

The tail end of the cold I picked up in Tucson is still hanging on, and I often feel as if my brain has turned to oatmeal. The cold has dwindled into nothing more than an annoying post-nasal drip, and eventually that will be gone, too. Patience is required.

I finally got my blood work back from USC and it shows my Tg, my tumor marker, has further decreased to 0.21 from 0.23 last time. One of these days it will come back "undetectable" and then I can really relax. When I last spoke with my doctor she wanted me to do a Thyrogen protocol for bloodwork only, which wouldn't be too bad as it doesn't require going on the Low Iodine Diet. I'll call the office next month to see if I need to schedule something.

I finished the two little one-credit courses I was taking, and registered for the next two in my program, starting next Monday. I'm finally getting into the "methods" courses and am looking forward to learning more about managing lesson plans and curricula.

The constant topic of conversation between DH and me is the kids' schooling. We are going to try to move them into a different, very challenging, charter school in the fall. It's a K-12 school (or will be, next year), and working there while my children attended there would be a dream job. I called and spoke to the head of the middle school to ask about doing my practicums there, and I was straightforward about my desire to get the kids in there and my longer term career goals. I was pleased when he called me back to set up the interview, because they don't usually do that kind of thing. We'll see how it goes.

Also school-related, I am working on an enrichment curriculum for DS1 so that he will keep up his writing and math skills in the interim.

The holiday-birthday season gets underway shortly with Halloween followed by DD's birthday. We'll scarcely go three weeks without some kind of celebration in this house from now till Easter -- it's fun but exhausting. We've decided to stay home this Christmas and not go to DisneyLand; being away from home for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day just didn't sit right with us.

My first paycheck arrived from LeapForce on October 22, three weeks after I submitted it. There were no issues whatsoever, and LeapForce emailed me to acknowledge receipt of the invoice, to tell me it had been approved, and to tell me it had been paid. Tasks have been scarce the past few days I've logged in to work, but timing is an important issue: weekends and Monday mornings are the worst times to get tasks, everybody's working then. It's going pretty well overall.